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Farce-track

I believe the high energy cost is the main reason the rapids and flume open late, with their large pumps they are amongst the most power-hungry rides in the park.
 
I am trying to find technical info on some of the rides, in an attempt to give an educated estimate of power usage. e.g are lift motors single or 3 phase?

Also would this conversation on power use do with being moved into it own thread as it getting off topic for this thread?
 
Almost definitely they would use 3 phase. 3 phase power is usually preferred for machines, motors and applications that use lots of power. This is a guess, but an educated one at that. Similar machinery operating in factory's use 3 phase, I cannot see a single reason as to why it would be different for a coaster. As essentially, a coaster is made up of the same industrial components.

For very large motors such as the lift motor, we use something called a Drive, which has its own built in computer. A drive allows us to dynamically change speeds and gives us many features for dealing with the large amount of power needed to run the lift motor. So much for brief, huh?
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From an interview from a person from Consign AG (the company who do most of the electrical and control systems for B&M rides)

Full interview below if your interested, although there is no indication on what phase they use, I seriously cannot see it being single phase.

http://www.coasterforce.com/coasters/interviews/consign-ag-brian-ondrey

If you search on the internet, it is no secret that theme parks consume colossal amounts of electricity. Alton Towers with it's ride selection will be no different!


Apologies, this seems to have drifted slight off the topic a bit!
 
People keep suggesting that Fastrack helps the park to pay the bills and maintain rides etc. This isn't the case as far as I can see.
The park will get a budget per year regardless of how many fast passes they sell. If they sell more then is simply means Merlin get more cash.

Can anyone confirm that the money from fastrack for the park to keep?
 
Croftybaby said:
People keep suggesting that Fastrack helps the park to pay the bills and maintain rides etc. This isn't the case as far as I can see.
The park will get a budget per year regardless of how many fast passes they sell. If they sell more then is simply means Merlin get more cash.

Can anyone confirm that the money from fastrack for the park to keep?
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No but budgets are based on projected income, so if you don't meet your target the budget next year decreases.


(yes its stupid but that's business.... and people wonder about the recession)
 
DRH said:
I don't believe power to be an issue. A single drive & a compressor. The motor won't be bigger than 100kw and the compressor maybe 20kw. Lights and music probably 10kw. (I don't know this as fact, just an educated guess) A drop in the ocean compared to the £75k approx they make a day from fastracks. Assuming they pay probably 10pence per kwh, that will cost them £13 an hour. Or £91 for the whole day.

Even double that because of all the smaller kicker motors & things I've forgotten, still the rate is so low compared to staffing, maintenance and upkeep. The elec is hardly worth mentioning I don't think.

Of course I could & probably will be proven wrong that oblivion uses much more power than that. Although I can't see it personally.
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Easily half a million pounds a year upwards for electricity costs on a large roller coaster I would have thought would be a realistic figure.

Every large coaster at a minimum has a relatively powerful lift hill / launch, multiple compressors, many motors to power transport wheels. Large PLC computer / control systems. Then more things depending on the type of ride. Plus don't forget rides like the Rapids, those pumps are immensely power full things that consume lots of power.

As for lift hill power, I am not sure on exact ratings, but they are definitely well over 100kw. Given the weight of the trains and the angle of the slopes I would say 500- 700 kw to be more realistic.

I've worked with automated systems in factory's before, which in lots of ways are very similar to roller coasters, in terms of how they operate, and the components that they use to actually make them work. Some of these machines in the UK have been known to use many thousands of pounds per day electricity costs, and without a doubt most use less power than what most roller coasters would. Due to using similar but less powerful components, as most factory systems don't require moving around items as heavy as a coaster car.

Without a doubt one of Alton Towers biggest expenses is for electricity, possibly even larger than staffing costs. Rides are power hungry beasts! Like any large mechanical machine, be it factory or theme park!

No doubt things like fast track go towards paying for this major expense.
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500kw motor? That's something like 650hp and nearly the size of a small car, I don't think a lift hill needs anything like that.

15Kw is normally the largest used on lift hills, the pumps on the rapids are bigger but not buy much.
As for a "drive" I assume you mean a frequency converter which is actually used to control the speed/acceleration etc. nothing to do with power.
The pumps have a soft start on them to build up revolutions.
 
ChocolateStarfish said:
DRH said:
I don't believe power to be an issue. A single drive & a compressor. The motor won't be bigger than 100kw and the compressor maybe 20kw. Lights and music probably 10kw. (I don't know this as fact, just an educated guess) A drop in the ocean compared to the £75k approx they make a day from fastracks. Assuming they pay probably 10pence per kwh, that will cost them £13 an hour. Or £91 for the whole day.

Even double that because of all the smaller kicker motors & things I've forgotten, still the rate is so low compared to staffing, maintenance and upkeep. The elec is hardly worth mentioning I don't think.

Of course I could & probably will be proven wrong that oblivion uses much more power than that. Although I can't see it personally.
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Easily half a million pounds a year upwards for electricity costs on a large roller coaster I would have thought would be a realistic figure.

Every large coaster at a minimum has a relatively powerful lift hill / launch, multiple compressors, many motors to power transport wheels. Large PLC computer / control systems. Then more things depending on the type of ride. Plus don't forget rides like the Rapids, those pumps are immensely power full things that consume lots of power.

As for lift hill power, I am not sure on exact ratings, but they are definitely well over 100kw. Given the weight of the trains and the angle of the slopes I would say 500- 700 kw to be more realistic.

I've worked with automated systems in factory's before, which in lots of ways are very similar to roller coasters, in terms of how they operate, and the components that they use to actually make them work. Some of these machines in the UK have been known to use many thousands of pounds per day electricity costs, and without a doubt most use less power than what most roller coasters would. Due to using similar but less powerful components, as most factory systems don't require moving around items as heavy as a coaster car.

Without a doubt one of Alton Towers biggest expenses is for electricity, possibly even larger than staffing costs. Rides are power hungry beasts! Like any large mechanical machine, be it factory or theme park!

No doubt things like fast track go towards paying for this major expense.
Click to expand...

500kw motor? That's something like 650hp and nearly the size of a small car, I don't think a lift hill needs anything like that.

15Kw is normally the largest used on lift hills, the pumps on the rapids are bigger but not buy much.
As for a "drive" I assume you mean a frequency converter which is actually used to control the speed/acceleration etc. nothing to do with power.
The pumps have a soft start on them to build up revolutions.
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I think 500kw would be rather excessive too, a Prius is only 50kw and that propels a 1.5tonne car to 80mph.

15kw sounds so small, but with the correct gearing could produce enough power to lift up the shuttles maybe. I still feel 100kw to be a realistic figure. Not to mention a 500kw motor would be huge, it would be prominently in view for us. The kicker motors are probably 8kw and they are noticeable.

I don't personally believe that fastracks fund the day to day running of he park. They are pure profit. If the park needed the money generated by fastracks got things such as power, the park is in financial ruin!

The plant who's supply chain I control use a substantial amount more power that AT by guess. And the elec bill is £200k (give-or-take) PCM. This is predominantly because of the energy required to HEAT, but also motors/drives. AT don't have heat to worry about for starters.

The fact that fastracks alone can generate 75k a day just shows that we are thinking small when we are worrying about the power. Maybe £1m a year at a real stretch.

Insurance, investment, staffing, marketing, and premises; just think how much that all costs.

The smiler - 18m, advertising 5m, staff 5m, security 5m, upkeep 5m (replacing fences, cleaning etc) are just under-exaggerated guesses on the scale of the operation.

Maybe I can find the turnover figures somewhere.
 
You'll struggle to find financial figures any more smudge. All the parks have been merged into one operating company and (as far as I am aware) they no longer have to publish their results.
 
Wheres this figure of £75,000 per day in fasttrack income come from? I find it very hard to believe the park make anywhere near that amount. To make that they would have to sell nearly 7000 of the £12 packages meaning that probably 1 in 2 visitors would have purchased a fastrack on a busy day.

The sums don't add up, unless it's £75k for Merlin as a whole? :/
 
John said:
The profits from fastrack are absolutely staggering when you stop and think about it.

Someone posted on TPM that there is a daily cap of 100 platinum and 250 gold tickets. Sell out of those and that's over £20k already. There are three £12 packages, of which they probably sell at least 500/hr (combined), so that's another £6k per hour. Smiler is £7 with a cap of 200/hr, so that could take in £1400 per hour on its own. On top of that you've got the £21 silver package, the £6 young explorer package and all the other single ride tickets (which I don't know the prices for).

When you add all that together, I reckon that on a peak day you could be looking at a figure in excess of £75000, almost all of it profit.
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I think the above sounds reasonable.
 
As above, the £75k figure was mine, using the prices of various tickets and some rough guesses of how many they sell per hour of each ticket.

Clearly it's not going to be anywhere near £75k most of the time, I'm talking about a peak day when there's over 20000 people in the park and they're close to selling out most of the fastrack allocation.

I would be very interested to know the exact daily/hourly cap of each type of ticket to get a more accurate figure of how much they're potentially making.
 
I think 500kw would be rather excessive too, a Prius is only 50kw and that propels a 1.5tonne car to 80mph.
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You need to remember, as you increase a incline, the power needed increases exponentially almost. The main factor that is needed here is torque. Lots of torque is needed to get those heavy cars up a lift hill, minus the power that is needed to actually move the few tonnes of lift hill chain. The powerful motors rotational movement is reduced in a reduction gearbox which in turn produces torque and lots of it. The only way to produce lots of torque is to have a powerful motor. You cannot really compare a Prius to a piece of industrial machinery, it probably does go 80mph on that motor, but it has no extra torque than what is needed to pull itself, and those stats will be given from the car travelling on a flat piece of test track. Cant really compare.

Plus big machines like this are over engineered in the fact that they do not just produce the components to 'just' be able to do what they need to do. They produce them more powerful and more stronger than ever will be needed. This provides a good degree of extra safety and reliability. Over engineering is used in pretty much every engineering project for these reasons.
 
I know this is off topic because it concerns Thorpe Park and not Alton but I have just witnessed the most horrendous miss-selling of Fastrack.

At the entrance to Rumba Rapids there was someone selling Fastrack advising guests that the queue was an hour long. Behind them was a board reading 25 minutes. When questioned they claimed it had not been updated. I immediately knew they were lying so headed up the bridge to see the actual queue which was 10 minutes at most. While queuing several other guests coming off the ride asked us how long we'd been waiting to which we told them and heard they had been informed it was a 75 minute queue.

Words failed me.
 
So the Thorpe upsellers thought it was an hour, the board said 25 mins, the queue looked 10 mins, and guests coming off the ride claiming they thought it was 75?

Words fail me...
 
Just edited it for you...

TedTheHuman said:
So the Thorpe upsellers claimed (knowing full well it wasn't) an hour, the board said 25 mins, the queue looked (and was) 10 mins, and guests coming off the ride who had bought the Fastrack claiming they were told it was 75?

Words fail me...
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Fortunately the person selling the Fastrack had gone by the time I got off the ride. If they hadn't I would have found the first staff member with a radio and reported it over park communications. Say what you want about Merlin but I know that if operations where aware of this they would not have been happy.

As it is I might still report it when I get chance (away for the next week, this was only a quick trip before setting off).
 
The only way to solve that practice is by reporting it to Guest Services.. by stating that they said it was an hour when the queue board said 25mins but you queued 10. That'd raise the issue.
 
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